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Once you get a job, the fun really begins. First, you are not automatically tenured...you have to work 3 years and 1 day successfully before you are given tenure. For the first year, you have to pay a mandatory $500 mentor fee to meet with another teacher (a mentor) to help you get your feet wet while teaching. If your schedule and the mentor's schedule don't meet up because the school has the teacher teaching 6 classes and pulling lunch duty, well, you are out of luck...you still pay the $500, which is a payroll deduction that you cannot opt out of. Oh, don't forget, the NJEA takes $1,200/year from each teacher compulsory...meaning no choice. The NJEA does not provide much of a service for non-tenured teachers, so that is nearly $4,000 of money taken from teachers. Now, you have 3-years to teach...you are observed 3-times a year by administrators and department heads who all get to chime in on your teaching methods. What's funny about this process is, they get to write down performance reviews which are permanent parts of your record, even if they do not know your subject or what is required. For instance, principals are performing reviews on Special Education teachers without any formal training in special education...so they have no idea what they are looking at. Oh well, no biggie. After 3-years, even if you have stellar reviews, the school can say...sorry...have a nice day and you are not rehired. Now, you can start from the bottom again...tenure does not travel...if you change districts, you start from scratch each time, both in salary and tenure .There is no hopping from job to job to get huge pay raises. You start from scratch. Ok, so now let's look at what teachers do for their students. I am going to focus on Special Education because in my eyes, they work the hardest and usually get the short end of the stick when it comes to allocation of resources. Special education teachers are responsible for creating IEP's for special needs students. IEP's, or "Individualized Education Plans" are documents that map out how a student shall be taught and interacted with at every level in every class for every moment of instruction for every day. These documents provide analysis of the childrens' behaviors, needs and provide teachers with both a specific teaching method and set of rules for interaction with the students. The Special Education teacher must actually know the student better than his/her own parents and construct this document to facilitate a positive and successful learning environment for each special needs student. These students can have problems ranging from behavioral issues to autism to blindness to down syndrome to any number of other issues. Special education teachers are required by law to provide these documents so the students can learn, test and function in daily life at the school. Teachers put these together after they get home from a 10-hour day at school.